WAOW Artistry of the West

The WAOW Artistry is slowly being built to provide a page on our site to promote each artist* You can search by name, location or by subject matter to find an artist.

*Artist Source Acknowledgment: Content on these pages is shared with permission and is sourced from the featured member artist’s website and professional biography. All rights remain with the artist.

Nancy Lilly • Texas • waow

Every work I do is allegorical. Every object in a still life is a symbol. Every landscape is a message about life. My family has been in Texas for more than 150 years, small wonder that the big sky, the vast austere beauty of the American West latches on to me. The self-reliance and integrity required to live in such a remote and challenging land has honed my values. It is no wonder that I return to it time and again. I value endurance and respond intensely to the strong light of the southwest. I look at a clump of cactus and see hope, strength, beauty. My work is about looking farther and looking closer to find the enduring beauty of being true. I am drawn to the implacable revelations of the harsh, glorious, and the remote dry earth of home.

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Tamara E. Burnett • Idaho • waow

I have long been drawn to the natural world whether it be landscape, flora, or fauna. This is where I find not only great outer beauty but genuine inner peace. It is easy to understand why capturing moments in nature has long been my creative focus. When creating my acrylic or watercolor paintings, I strive to strike a powerful balance between technical precision and emotional depth. To this end I am careful to produce balanced and often dynamic compositions while imparting radiant color and light through the careful use of color theory. I am well known for my use of delicate detail as an accent to my finished works.

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Lorraine Marie Cote • California • waow

Lorraine is an artist whose work embodies the light, mood and atmosphere of the moment, which is why she particularly loves plein air painting. She aims for viewers to feel the emotion in her paintings and encourages them to notice the landscape and people around them in a new way. Her style is impressionistic, characterized by bold brushstrokes, dynamic compositions, and a variety of marks. She paints so that her work remains compelling both from a distance and upon close inspection.

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Shelly Johnson • Idaho • waow

I create art because the process is my meditation and my connection with a power greater than myself. When I see the feeling of a joyful childhood, the beauty of the play of light on a rusty Model A, or the drama of red poppies in early spring, translate from my brush to the physical page, I know that there is a benevolent force at work in me and in the world around me.

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Tara Will • Maryland • waow

Unlike the spoken word, where language can leave a listener feeling like an outsider— visual art has no prerequisites to participate. As such, we as artists have the supreme honor of taking a vision and sharing it with our viewers. When we create, we ask ourselves the ultimate question: Why? What is it about a place, a person, a subject that makes us want to share with our viewers. What do we want them to experience? Do we want to dance? Do we want to fight?

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Lynn Haste • Montana • waow

My work begins with a moment in the natural world — a quiet encounter, a held gaze,
or a fleeting gesture from an animal that lingers long after the moment has passed.
These experiences stay with me, and they become the stories I bring into my
paintings and sculptures.

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Kim Casebeer • Kansas• waow

Kim Casebeer spent her childhood exploring the outdoors on her family farm and has a lengthy connection to the landscape.  She travels across the United States to paint en plein air, gathering color studies for studio work. Kim’s work often focuses on big skies and open spaces of the western United States.

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Rhonda Williams • Oklahoma• waow

Rhonda was born and raised in Bartlesville,Oklahoma and has a BS in Art Education from Oklahoma State University and hours toward a minor in printmaking. She is married to Paul and has four grown children. Rhonda has lived in Verdigris, Owasso, Oologah and Bartlesville in Oklahoma. She has worked as an  Advanced Placement High School Art Teacher as well as teaching art at both the elementary and middle school levels. Throughout the years Rhonda has worked as both a commercial artist as well as a fine artist. Since retiring from teaching in 2020, she has been concentrating on her work as a fine artist, painting commissioned artwork in oil paint. Rhonda is a current member of the Bartlesville Art Association.

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Audrey Caylor • Texas • waow

Audrey Caylor is an award–winning contemporary wildlife and western artist.  Her medium of choice is oil with a heavy bold brush and palette knife technique through which she explores the beauty of wildlife and how the simplicity of one brush stroke can depict that.   The purpose of her work is to capture the feeling or the spirit of the animal with a simple glance.

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Laurie Harrower • Utah • waow

I paint daily and my medium is oil. Sometimes I use cold wax for my abstracts. I also use oil sticks for some added line work.  I am inspired by so much beauty around me that I can’t be in a "pigeon hole” so I go with my "intuition in the moment" in my studio. I live in Ogden Utah.  I use my photos from my adventures out and about so all paintings are done in studio.  I have ' essential tremor' and paint with two hands;  we all have something to overcome in pursuing the love of life,  some more than others. “

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Mary Sirody • California • waow

I can’t wait to start. Draw, scribble, drip, dry, slap it on, scrape it off. Freedom. Slap it on. Smooth it out. Transparent, opaque, smoky. Saturate it, desaturate it. Shape it, form it. Form less. I tell myself stories, meandering, disconnected, maybe meaning less or more:  She went over here under the heavy overhang, then ran across the road, but when she got there, I didn’t know what to do. Show kindness. Why not. At least don’t be cruel. Especially to animals. And people too. Did you see that yucca, the explosion of buttery petals and dead seed pods. The horny toad. Did you see the scribbly mass of desiccated spikes and roots - wild. The fluorescent lime green moss on the rust rock? Capture it. Not literally. Duh. What did they say? I don’t get why she hates me? Oh. I’ll just hide. Ahhh. More of this. I love it. Or do I! Maybe. Don’t think about it.

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Brittany Lutz • California • waow

As an educator and artist, I desire to bring curiosity to the canvas and explore our world through Visual Art.  As I step through the Looking Glass, I desire to reveal the glory and beauty in God's creation as He reveals it to me.  I focus on color and light as I see it in God's majestic creations. 

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Kristen Freeborn • California • waow

Every day in America, there is a tragic loss of family owned, working ranches. Through my paintings, I am trying to capture this lifestyle, before it disappears altogether. I want to provide a window into a world of how the ranchers work, and to commemorate the disappearing landscape, animals, ranchers and traditional tools of their trade.

I have lived all my life near the border of North Dakota and Montana, and it is in this area I spend time on these vanishing ranches.

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Daphne Clark • North Dakota • waow

Every day in America, there is a tragic loss of family owned, working ranches. Through my paintings, I am trying to capture this lifestyle, before it disappears altogether. I want to provide a window into a world of how the ranchers work, and to commemorate the disappearing landscape, animals, ranchers and traditional tools of their trade.

I have lived all my life near the border of North Dakota and Montana, and it is in this area I spend time on these vanishing ranches.

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Ilona Benzak • Florida • waow

“Art has always been an intricate part of my life. I feel that a successful work of art is a combination of creative vision and the integrity of the subject matter. To me this makes for a finished and honorable painting... job well done.” 

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Alison Crary • Arizona • waow

I find myself constantly inspired by light, color, and the sense of atmosphere found in western landscapes- from grand vistas to simple scenes with interesting light. My goal is not strict realism but rather to convey the 'feel' of a particular place and time; I want to share the sense of excitement with you that made me want to paint that scene in the first place!

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Karen Wadsworth • California • waow

I'm a Southern California artist who has returned to an early love called painting. I have a BFA in Illustration from CSULB and worked in a corporate art department before taking time off to raise a family.  I picked my brushes up again during the COVID epidemic, and am now happily wrestling with the challenges and pleasures of painting on location (aka “en plein air”) and in my studio.  

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Doris Hubbell • Colorado • waow

After moving to Colorado 30 years ago from Switzerland, Doris Hubbell finally found time to discover oil painting. Her western lifestyle here in Colorado on their horse & hay ranch with beautiful Labrador Retrievers inspired her to explore her artistic expression. “I enjoy expressing my love for all of them through my art!”

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Regina Free • Oklahoma • waow

"I am an interdisciplinary artist who prides myself as a wife and mother of three amazing children. I set art aside for twenty years to enjoy the fleeting moments of their childhood. Now that the time is right I am building my portfolio and exploring new mediums." Regina Free

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Sascha Ripps • Colorado • waow

Sascha Ripps is a contemporary realist painter of landscapes, wildlife, botanical and floral themes.  She works in oil on panel with the goal of capturing the intensity of light, color, texture and the energy she feels from her subjects.  She blends elements of realism with abstraction, especially when zooming in on textures in her work.

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